A critical threshold for being alone and age differences in loneliness
Isn’t being alone kind of instrumental to loneliness?
Yes, we would think so — but this distinction is not as obvious as it sounds. Consider the concept of the wise man sitting alone in a cave. Indeed, as I reported before (see links below), wisdom seems to make us almost immune to loneliness.
Oh, so what does contribute to loneliness then?
I won’t repeat what I reported previously (again see links below), but rather on this recent study by Lisa Bergman et al. of the University of Arizona. They conducted a study of over 400 people that tracked their daily interactions and therefore gave a good quantifiable measure of when and precisely how long people were alone and matched this to feelings of loneliness.
And what were the results?
Well, there is a correlation to being alone and being lonely but this is only after a certain stage and for certain ages.
So they found that a major cut off point is spending time alone for more than 75% of time. Below this it didn’t seem to correlate to loneliness — so you can spend two thirds of your time alone but this won’t make you feel lonely. However, once…
